War is supposed to be full of action. Men are supposed to dive over barbed wire and charge at the enemy while being shot. The enemy is supposed to be tough and unrelenting but eventually die or surrender. War is supposed to be noisy and bullets are supposed to fly at you constantly. Soldiers are ...
"I want you to shoot me," he said. He must have been joking. It was a struggle to drive, never mind listen to rubbish like this, but he was serious. I was following an American Humvee in the middle of a Kuwaiti night in 2003. Under the cover of darkness we made our way closer to the Iraqi ...
The Afghanistan war started over ten years ago. We"ve seen maps and graphics on the news, but without Googling it, can you name the capital? What languages do they speak? Which countries border Afghanistan? Could you name three other nations that were part of the coalition with the US and the ...
If you were drawing up plans on how to run a private members" club, a larger society, or even a country, military life provides some good ground rules. SELECT YOUR MEMBERS CAREFULLY AND TREAT THEM WELL You wouldn"t want everyone in a perfect society, so not everyone can join. You"d ...
Some soldiers are meant to join the elite forces, become spies, and swing through windows shouting and shooting. Some aren"t. That we"re all equal is one of the greatest lies ever told. Kids are told they can become anything they want to, and then they learn the hard way that they most ...
Sex and soldiers are the forces of life and death crashing into one another. It gets animalistic. It gets filmed. Luckily for me, the Ministry of Defence had decided to treat the British Army to single-man rooms by the time I"d enlisted. It was still animalistic, but at least now there were ...
"They"re racist and they"ll kick your head in," a white man named Paul warned me outside a convenience store in Burnley. He"d heard I was starting basic training the next day. I"d been buying a few last things: padlocks, black marker pens, and sweets for the train down to ...
We used to joke about PTSD in the army. We used to call it the "new backache," meaning something doctors couldn"t prove but would get you out of work. Malingerers aren"t appreciated in the military. The ill were called the "sick, lame, and lazy" who were "on the ...
He saw people stare, but he looked right through them. His mind was on something satisfying. A distant thought made him smile. The bands on his right wrist read "Parachute Regiment" and "Walking With The Wounded." His T-shirt had a whisky sponsor's name on it and his left arm ...
The word "hero" should not apply to every man and woman serving in the military. To blindly term everyone a hero takes away from those who do something extraordinary. It's like saying "our boys"; it takes away from "our girls." Don"t they all do an extraordinary job? No, ...
